Thursday, May 22, 2014

For as long as I can remember, there has been a hype over
the revival of Yiddish. Yiddish programs are being touted in universities all
over North America and as far away as Tokyo, Japan. Naturally, “conversational
Yiddish” is all the rage, as though the goal is to be able ask a girl to a
movie in Yiddish, or to take her to a nice restaurant and order a shrimp
cocktail.

That’s not what Yiddish is to me. For me, it’s a window into
our past: a means to learn about who we are and where we came from. I don’t think
you can begin to appreciate these things until you know an awful lot about the
Yiddish language. And you can’t begin to understand the true nature of Yiddish
without first knowing German.

That’s right: German. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. But
unless you appreciate its German yichus,
then isn’t Yiddish just a bunch of funny words that are different from English?
What makes Yiddish so special, so characteristically ours, is the way our
people took the German language and adapted it to their unique civilization. By
learning Yiddish, we remember and respect that civilization in a way that we
can’t duplicate by building a hundred Holocaust museums. Conversely, by
abandoning Yiddish…well, you know what I’m thinking.

But that’s not what I want to talk about today. I want to
give you a little glimpse into that world, a form of time travel if you like,
made possible via the miracle of the Yiddish Language. The short excerpt I’m
going to give you is taken from the six-part collection Yiddische Neshumos(Jewish Souls), by noted folklorist A. Litwin.
Compiled in the years leading up to the First World War, it is apparent that
even then, people had the sense that the old world was slipping away, and there
was a desperate need to preserve its memory while there was still time. Today’s
reading is actually taken from the pinkas
(communal records) of the village of Karlitch, from the late 18th
century. It seems that a Jewish woman has been called before the community
elders for the crime of riding in a coach with a Gentile. It’s a fascinating
glimpse into our long-ago world that I’m not
going to translate for you, because it’s obvious to me that anyone who’s
taken a semester or two of College German (as I did when I was a student)…and
who’s also had the benefit of a few years of Hebrew education, which is readily
available within our community…should be able to catch the gist of it without
much difficulty. And just because it was more convenient (and less work) for
you to take a course in Intro Psych or Modern Film or what have you, instead of
actually buckling down and learning something real like a major world language with a hundred million
speakers…well, forgive me, but right now I don’t feel like catering to your
willful ignorance. (Although you’ll see that I’ve drawn attention to and
translated the Hebrew words, which are overly represented here because it’s a
formal account of a legal proceeding…just like our judges like to toss in the
Latin. And if you’re game to give it a try, I’m just going to give you one
piece of advice…don’t stop every time
you see a word you don’t know. Go a little farther and see if you can’t work it
out backwards from context. It’s really not so hard, and almost as much fun as
doing a cryptoquote or a crossword puzzle.)

Sunday, May 11, 2014

This is the third and final installment of the story I started telling earlier this week. Actually, I'm repeating the story here from the beginning, so if you want to skip ahead to the conclusion, just scroll down to the boldface portion. Otherwise, here is the story in full...

* * * * * * * *

My sister and her husband were visiting from out of town for
his 30th Anniversary Medical Shool Reunion, and we were going out
for breakfast…Peter and Cathy, myself, and my father. Peter was telling my
father about the incredible coincidence we had experienced the night before
when he and I had gone down the lounge at his hotel for a drink. Peter and I are
both musicians; in fact, although he is two years younger than me, you could
say he was my mentor and biggest influence when we were in university. We also
share a mathematical bent, so music theory is a frequent topic of conversation
for us. That night Peter had asked me if I had ever really thought about how
diminished chords are used in popular music. You mightbe surprised what an animated conversation
two fifty-something-year-old guys can get into on that kind of topic; suffice
to say it wasn’t long before we were hammering out imaginary piano chord
progressions on the barroom table, arms waving and feet pounding in rhythm,
shouting things like “minor seven flat five! minor seven flat five! That’s when
a guy came over to the table. No, he wasn’t the concierge, come to ask us to
please control ourselves…he was, as he introduced himself, a musician from out
of town, here all alone, and he couldn’t help notice two fellow musicians
having such a lively conversation about…music. Naturally we asked him to join
us.

His name was Eric. “Where are you from?” New York. “What do
you play?” Saxophone. Peter was suddenly very interseted. “Tenor or alto?”
Tenor. “What did you say your name was?” Eric Alexander.

Peter’s jaw dropped. “You’re the Eric Alexander? One of the best saxophone players in the
world?”

The stranger allowed as to how he was indeed. “This is unbelievable”,
Peter said. He then explained that he had been planning to phone Eric Alexander
that very week. Peter had left the medical profession in the early 90’s after
his music software business, which had began as a hobby, suddenly took off. It
is hardly an exaggeration to say that since his initial offering in 1987 of a
relatively straightforward auto-accompaniment program which generated
arrangements based on chord charts, Peter has almost single-handedly redefined
the territory of artificial intellignence with regard to computer-generated
music. One of his most interesting innovations has been the idea of having a
computer take hours of human-generated jazz improvization and, using complex
algorithms, chop those tracks into discrete segments (“licks”) to be
re-arranged over new chord patterns. The results have been surprisingly musical
and spontaneous; as Peter sees it, it works because it mimics as closely as
possible the process whereby real musicians generate lead solos.

To this end he has been hiring world-class musicians on a
whole range or instruments…piano, guitar, clarinet, pedal steel, you name it…to
generate those hours of improvisations. And as he explained to us at the table,
there was only one instrument remaining on his “to-do” list…you guessed it, the
tenor saxophone. And who was he
thinking of hiring? That was exactly the question over which he had conferred
with his colleagues back home that very week, and they had short-listed three
names: Sonny Rollins, Joe Lovano, and Eric Alexander. And Peter had already
decided that it was Eric whom he would approaching first, at the earliest
opportunity. Well, it seemed that opportunity had come just a little earlier
than expected.

It turned out that we were not yet done with coincidences.
Eric for his part could hardly believe he was sitting at the same table with
Peter Gannon, the inventor of the original “Band-in-a-Box”. Of course he had
heard of Peter! He counted off for us this renowned soloist or that one of his
acquaintance who used “the Box” as a back-up band to practise with at home. You
can imagine how Peter was kvelling (as
I was too, if there is such a thing as kvelling
vicariously)! And not the least surprising was the way in which Eric leapt with
alacrity into the discussion of diminished chords, analyzing with enthusiasm
and intelligence their application in this jazz standard and that one. It was
hours before the evening finally broke up.

“I’m not so sure.” My father had spoken up. “I think I have a
better one.”

And then he began his story. It seems that during his years
in the Schreyer government in the 1970’s, he had had the opportunity to do a
certain amount of world travelling. In particular, as Minister of Mines and
Resources, he had been sent to a conference in Argentina on Water Resources (a
topic on which I have previously written in this very column), where he made a
point of looking up the Israeli delegation. As it happened, he quickly hit it
off with a colleague of his own age whom he ended up taking to dinner. That
colleague turned out to be one Shaul Arlosoroff.

A lifelong friendship ensued. On a subsequent trip to Asia
some years later, my father made a point of visiting Arlosoroff in Singapore,
where he had been posted on an overseas assignment. During that visit, he had
also met Arlosoroff’s Asian housekeeper, who told him she was planning to move
to Canada in the future. My father gave her his card, so she could call him up
if she ever made it to Winnipeg.

Fast forward five years. Arlosoroff was in North America,
and he had arranged a stopover in Winnipeg to visit my father. They were in the
basement playing pool when the conversation turned to his Malaysian
housekeeper. Whatever had happened to her? Had she ever made it to Canada? Arlosoroff’s
face darkened. In fact, she had. He believed she had gone to Toronto, but he
had lost touch with her. He was in fact concerned that something bad might have
happened.

At that moment, my
mother came down the stairs carrying the phone. (No…I must correct myself. This
was still back in the prehistoric days when all telephones were conneceted to
the wall by a physical cord.) There was a woman on the phone, and she was
calling for Shaul. “But I didn’t give anyone your number,” he protested. “Who knows
that I am here?”

It turned out the caller wasn’t exactly looking for Shaul.
She had in fact called for my father, hoping to ask him Shaul’s phone number,
which she had lost. She was none other than the Malaysian housekeeper, alive
and well, and calling long distance from Toronto. And she had called us in
Winnipeg on the very day, the one day in ten thousand, when Shaul happened to
be in our house…and almost at the very moment when she herself was the topic of
conversation!

The waitress came around to fill our coffees. “You know,” I
said, “that’s an incredible story. But if Arlosoroff were here and we asked him
to tell about his most amazing coincidence, he might tell a different story.”

My father yielded the floor to me, and I continued. Some of
my readers by now are surely wondering if my father’s friend had any connection
to the Arlosoroff. Indeed he had.
Shaul was none other than the son of Chaim Arlosoroff, the Zionist leader whose
murder in 1933 on a Tel Aviv beachfront was no less traumatic for Yishuv in its
day than Rabin’s assasination would be sixty years later. I called Arlosoroff’s
death a “murder” rather than an assasination, in deference to the verdict of
the investigative commision appointed by Menachem Begin when he was Prime
Minister, whose findings “conveniently” whitewashed the alleged involvement of
the Revisionist movement in Arlosoroff’s death. If you want to know the real
story of what happened, I strongly recommend the Wikipedia article on the life
of Arlosoroff. I was amazed to learn what a powerful voice he was for
cooperation with the Arabs, and the critical role he played in the
controversial negotiations with Nazi Germany to facilitate the emigration of refugees
to Palestine. (Both of these initiatives were bitterly opposed by the Revisionists.)

Three Revisionist members were in fact put on trial, and one
of them, Abraham Stavsky, was convicted. His conviction was subsequently
overturned by the Supreme Court because there was only one witness to identify
him (Arlosoroff’s wife) and not two as required by Turkish Law, then still in
force under the terms of the Mandate. Stavsky went free, but the controversy
did not die.

Fast forward fifteen years and six million lives. The new
Jewish state was fighting for its survival against the invading armies of five
Arab states. In the first three weeks of fighting, the Jews have miraculously
held on, and in fact even slightly expanded the territory under their control,
in particularly having just opened a vital link to the beseiged City of Jerusalem
only hours before the imposition of a UN-brokered truce. Now both sides are
desperately re-arming for the second round of fighting. The Revisionist
movement has bought a rusty old freighter in Europe and filled it with
munitions. It is called the Altalena and it is off the coast of Palestine,
having slipped past the UN-sanctioned British naval blockade. Menachem Begin is
on board.

Begin is determined to use the arms to bolster his own
forces, but Ben Gurion is adamantly opposed to an army-within-an-army. He
agrees to commit 20% of the munitions to Betar brigades fighting in Jerusalem,
but it Begin wants more, and Ben Gurion refuses to budge. The entire Jewish
world is shocked as Ben Gurion orders the Altalena to be taken by force. In the
ensuing battle, sixteen Irgun fighters and three Haganah soldiers are killed.
The ship is sunk and the arms are lost. Among the dead is Abraham Stavsky. You
can read this on Wikipedia. But there is one more small detail which you will
not find on the internet: of the Haganah brigade which was ordered to fire on
the ship, one of its member was a young soldier named Shaul Arlosoroff.
Obviously no one will ever know whose bullet killed who in a pitched battle;
but you will surely appreciate that one particular soldier from that brigade
has never been able to stop wondering if the bullet which found Stavsky wasn’t
his.

The waitress was clearing the table and refilling our
coffees for the last time. Peter had been fascinated by the whole story. “Where
was the murder trial held?” he asked. We told him it was under the British
Mandatory authorities, so it was probably in Jerusalem. Peter remarked that an
great-uncle on his mother’s side had been a British Judge. What was the name?
Peter thought about it: “It was either a Plunkett or a McCormack”. I already
knew that his mother’s family had just a bit more yichus than that of his father, a happy-go-lucky Dublin music hall
entertainer from whom Peter and his brother, noted guitarist Oliver Gannon, had
inherited their musical talent. I thought I remembered Peter mentioning a
relative who had been a high government official in Hong Kong. “Is that the one
you’re talking about?” I asked him? “No, you don’t understand,” Peter went on. “My
uncle was a judge in Palestine.” The
table fell silent.

If you look up Oliver Plunkett on Wikipedia, you will see
that he was one of the judges in the trial of Abraham Stavsky.

* * * * * * * *

POSTSCRIPT: I sent this story to Arlosoroff in Israel, and he was gratified that people still took an interest these things; but perhaps he thought it was time to set the record straight. Indeed, the story of the "magic bullet" had been repeated many times in Israel in the years following the sinking of the Altalena. In fact, prior to the confrontation it was known that Stavsky was on board the Altalena; and therefore Arlosoroff's commander, perhaps not wanting to tempt fate, had ordered the young Chaim to stay in Tel Aviv when his unit was assigned to the beaches. And that's where he was when the Altalena went down.

Thursday, May 8, 2014

“I’m not so sure.” My father had spoken up. “I think I have a
better one.”

When we left off yesterday, I was telling you about an unusual breakfast conversation in the Pancake House one Sunday morning. My brother-in-law had just finished telling the story about how we'd run into a world-famous saxophone player in the hotel lounge the previous night...a New York musician whom Peter had been planning to contact the very next week! An amazing coincidence...but my father thought he could do Peter one better....

* * * * *

And then he began his story. It seems that during his years
in the Schreyer government in the 1970’s, he had had the opportunity to do a
certain amount of world travelling. In particulary, as Minister of Mines and
Resources, he had been sent to a conference in Argentina on Water Resources (a
topic on which I have previously written in this very column), where he made a
point of looking up the Israeli delegation. As it happened, he quickly hit it
off with a colleague of his own age whom he ended up taking to dinner. That
colleague turned out to be one Shaul Arlosoroff.

A lifelong friendship ensued. On a subsequent trip to Asia
some years later, my father made a point of visiting Arlosoroff in Singapore,
where he had been posted on an overseas assignment. During that visit, he had
also met Arlosoroff’s Asian housekeeper, who told him she was planning to move
to Canada in the future. My father gave her his card, so she could call him up
if she ever made it to Winnipeg.

Fast forward five years. Arlosoroff was in North America,
and he had arranged a stopover in Winnipeg to visit my father. They were in the
basement playing pool when the conversation turned to his Malaysian
housekeeper. Whatever had happened to her? Had she ever made it to Canada? Arlosoroff’s
face darkened. In fact, she had. He believed she had gone to Toronto, but he
had lost touch with her. He was in fact concerned that something bad might have
happened.

At that moment, my
mother came down the stairs carrying the phone. (No…I must correct myself. This
was still back in the prehistoric days when all telephones were connected to
the wall by a physical cord.) There was a woman on the phone, and she was
calling for Shaul. “But I didn’t give anyone your number,” he protested. “Who knows
that I am here?”

It turned out the caller wasn’t exactly looking for Shaul.
She had in fact called for my father, hoping to ask him Shaul’s phone number,
which she had lost. She was none other than the Malaysian housekeeper, alive
and well, and calling long distance from Toronto. And she had called us in
Winnipeg on the very day, the one day in ten thousand, when Shaul happened to
be in our house…and almost at the very moment when she herself was the topic of
conversation!

The waitress came around to fill our coffees. “You know,” I
said, “that’s an incredible story. But if Arlosoroff were here and we asked him
to tell about his most amazing coincidence, he might tell a different story.”

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

I'm still running low on physics these days, so here's another article from my Jewish Post series. This is a long and intricate story with an unusual ending, and it's longer than most of my articles. So I've broken it up into three parts, which I'll post over the next three days. Here's the first installment.

* * * * * * *

Breakfast At The Pancake House

My sister and her husband were visiting from out of town for
his 30th Anniversary Medical Shool Reunion, and we were going out
for breakfast…Peter and Cathy, myself, and my father. Peter was telling my
father about the incredible coincidence we had experienced the night before
when he and I had gone down the lounge at his hotel for a drink. Peter and I are
both musicians; in fact, although he is two years younger than me, you could
say he was my mentor and biggest influence when we were in university. We also
share a mathematical bent, so music theory is a frequent topic of conversation
for us. That night Peter had asked me if I had ever really thought about how
diminished chords are used in popular music. You mightbe surprised what an animated conversation
two fifty-something-year-old guys can get into on that kind of topic; suffice
to say it wasn’t long before we were hammering out imaginary piano chord
progressions on the barroom table, arms waving and feet pounding in rhythm,
shouting things like “minor seven flat five! minor seven flat five! That’s when
a guy came over to the table. No, he wasn’t the concierge, come to ask us to
please control ourselves…he was, as he introduced himself, a musician from out
of town, here all alone, and he couldn’t help notice two fellow musicians
having such a lively conversation about…music. Naturally we asked him to join
us.

His name was Eric. “Where are you from?” New York. “What do
you play?” Saxophone. Peter was suddenly very interseted. “Tenor or alto?”
Tenor. “What did you say your name was?” Eric Alexander.

Peter’s jaw dropped. “You’re the Eric Alexander? One of the best saxophone players in the
world?”

The stranger allowed as to how he was indeed. “This is unbelievable”,
Peter said. He then explained that he had been planning to phone Eric Alexander
that very week. Peter had left the medical profession in the early 90’s after
his music software business, which had began as a hobby, suddenly took off. It
is hardly an exaggeration to say that since his initial offering in 1987 of a
relatively straightforward auto-accompaniment program which generated
arrangements based on chord charts, Peter has almost single-handedly redefined
the territory of artificial intellignence with regard to computer-generated
music. One of his most interesting innovations has been the idea of having a
computer take hours of human-generated jazz improvization and, using complex
algorithms, chop those tracks into discrete segments (“licks”) to be
re-arranged over new chord patterns. The results have been surprisingly musical
and spontaneous; as Peter sees it, it works because it mimics as closely as
possible the process whereby real musicians generate lead solos.

To this end he has been hiring world-class musicians on a
whole range or instruments…piano, guitar, clarinet, pedal steel, you name it…to
generate those hours of improvisations. And as he explained to us at the table,
there was only one instrument remaining on his “to-do” list…you guessed it, the
tenor saxophone. And who was he
thinking of hiring? That was exactly the question over which he had conferred
with his colleagues back home that very week, and they had short-listed three
names: Sonny Rollins, Joe Lovano, and Eric Alexander. And Peter had already
decided that it was Eric whom he would approaching first, at the earliest
opportunity. Well, it seemed that opportunity had come just a little earlier
than expected.

It turned out that we were not yet done with coincidences.
Eric for his part could hardly believe he was sitting at the same table with
Peter Gannon, the inventor of the original “Band-in-a-Box”. Of course he had
heard of Peter! He counted off for us this renowned soloist or that one of his
acquaintance who used “the Box” as a back-up band to practise with at home. You
can imagine how Peter was kvelling (as
I was too, if there is such a thing as kvelling
vicariously)! And not the least surprising was the way in which Eric leapt with
alacrity into the discussion of diminished chords, analyzing with enthusiasm
and intelligence their application in this jazz standard and that one. It was
hours before the evening finally broke up.